Simple
by tiger002
Summary: Zack is ready to start a fun weekend. But a choice he makes leaves Cody mad. Will he be able to fix things before it's too late?


**Author Note:** Just a simple one-shot I came up with a while back. I'll give an explanation at the end.

 **Simple**

The day had come to a close, and for Zack, the feeling was really cool. It was Friday, and he was now free for an entire two days. He set his bag filled with books and other stuff on the floor, kicked his shoes off, and walked to his room, noticing that it had started to rain a little bit, making him happy that he got home when he did.

When he got into his room, he heard some loud noise that shook the room, telling him that it was probably going to storm, which made him even happier that he got back to his home while he did. He turned on the TV, figuring that there wasn't any better way to enjoy such a great day.

...

"ZACK!"

Well, he was expecting this soon enough. "Hey Codester, what's up?"

"Oh, I think you very much know what's up Zack." There Cody was, standing in the doorway, his hair and clothes really wet. Zack turned to the window, and saw that there was a lot of rain blowing against it, and he knew that everything was going just as he had thought it would.

"It really is raining out there, isn't it?"

"Yes, Zack, it is. And you know what else? Walking through the rain for 20 minutes isn't fun, especially when it's cold, and really windy. And you know what else Zack, it would be much faster if I could just not need to walk because I had something I could ride that had 2 wheels."

"Now Cody, before you get mad at me..."

"Oh, I'm already mad at you!"

"Look just calm down, let me explain," Zack said holding his hands up and slowly backing away from his brother.

"It better be really good explaining."

"Well, there was this girl."

"I should have known..." Cody said with a roll of his eyes. Here he thought that he could trust Zack with the extra key to the lock. Zack might get into trouble a lot, but he'd never do something that bad to his own brother, or at least that's what Cody thought.

"Actually, let me start when I left school."

"I guess you might as well."

...

So, since it was the end of the week, I figured why should I end the day on something so boring as that mean class with lots of numbers? I gave the teacher a note that said it was from the doctor, so I could go home early. Those poor kids, having to go through all that pain, but I was free. I went to the place where all those 2 wheeled things are.

...

"You know what those are actually called Zack."

"And you know how I feel about that word, now let's just get back to the story!"

...

I went to use the key to get the lock off mine, which took a bit longer than I would have liked because it started to get windy. But when I finally got it to work, I heard the sound of something loud coming from down the street. I looked at what it could have been, but before I could figure it out, a girl came running down the street with a worried look on her face.

"Does that belong to you?"

"Yeah, it does."

"I'll buy it from you for ten hundred right now!" she said, getting the money out of her pocket.

"Wait, why?"

"Let's just say the NSA doesn't like to laugh. And they don't find me putting stuff that makes everyone laugh into their hidden meeting rooms funny. So I need to get to a different state now."

"Would you take my brother's instead?"

"Does it work?"

"Yeah, he takes good care of it."

"I'll take it then."

So, then she took off on it, some guys who were dressed really nice started coming and running after her, and I went home.

...

"So you're telling me that you sold me out for a little bit of money?"

"I'll share it with you! How about 50/50?"

"Zack, that's not the point!" Cody said as he started to walk around the room.

"You can buy a new one with that much money, and one much better than the one Mom got for free from that store!"

"Yes, but I can't buy the camera I had kept on it that I was going to take to get pictures from after school today."

"Who cares, they were just pictures!"

"They were the ones from the dance I went to with Barbra. I promised her that I'd put them into a book so we'd always remember them."

"Oh, sorry."

"Sorry isn't going to cut it this time," Cody said, and Zack could tell that he was serious.

"What do you mean?"

"You're going to help me get those pictures back. Or someone is going to learn the truth about a certain event that had the dance floor covered in pool water."

Zack knew he was beat here, he was able to keep that event hidden from Moseby so far, despite the fact that Moseby knew he did it, he just couldn't prove anything. "Okay, fine. I've been ready for something like this."

"You have?"

"Watch and be surprised young Cody, for the great Zack will now show you his power."

"The last time you said that, I spent the next 3 days in the hospital," Cody said, remembering how he got his fear of blue windows.

"Just trust me this time." Cody had his arms crossed, but that didn't stop Zack from going on. "You remember that time I went to the movie and tried to block the hotel door, so no one could get in."

"Of course, I still make fun of you for that."

"Well, that taught me something very important. First, don't expect any plan that you help me with to go right. And second, that you can always find what you need if you look hard enough. Now, follow me." With that, Zack ran out of the room, and before Cody could catch up to him, he was already down the hall.

"What is he doing?" Cody asked. But despite not knowing, Cody ran after him, but not before the doors closed and Zack was going down. Cody knew it would take at least a hundred seconds before he could go after Zack, unless he took the stairs, but so many of those wouldn't end well. Cody couldn't believe he'd given Zack the key, it seemed like a good idea at the time, a good back up plan if he actually lost the first key, but he should have known Zack couldn't be trusted.

Finally, the doors opened so he rushed inside, and then took some deep breaths as he felt the 23 floors pass by him. When the doors finally opened, he rushed into the room, looking around at all the people checking in, but as he did so, he didn't see Zack anywhere. "Maddie," he said, almost yelling seeing her at the counter where she always worked. "Have you seen Zack?"

"Well, he went to talk to Moseby."

"That...can't be good," Cody said, knowing the only time Zack would talk to Moseby was when he wanted something. "Where are they?"

"In his office I think."

"Thanks," Cody said rushing by several of the people checking in, trying not to get yelled at by Estabon who seemed to be quite busy. He then reached Moseby's office, and threw the door open.

"Good, that took you long enough," Zack said.

"What's going on?" Cody asked.

"Well Moseby here thought that the hotel ran better when we weren't around," Zack said.

"I've been proven quite right so far," Moseby said.

"And well, he thought it would be a good idea to figure out how close we were to the hotel so he put something on our two wheeled things that tells him how far away they are."

"So why doesn't he call them-"

"Long story, you don't want to hear it," Cody said before Moseby could finish the question.

"Anyway," Moseby said taking a deep breath. "It looks like they are about to leave the city." He brought up something on his computer and pointed to a flashing light.

"See, now all we have to do is go after it, and this will all work out," Zack said.

"But how do you suggest we do that?" Cody asked. "It's that far away, and we can't drive."

"We may not be able to but..."

"No," Moseby said before Zack could finish the question.

"I wasn't talking about you. Follow me Cody." With that, Zack left the office, so Cody followed him, not sure if this would actually be a good idea or not. But maybe Zack could fix this. Or knowing him, make everything worse, either way, it would be fun to see.

They walked around several people with Zack leading the way and Cody trying to keep up, though he kept talking about how he was pretty sure whatever idea Zack had wouldn't end well unless it was caught on camera and ended up on YouTube.

"Don't worry Cody, nothing will go wrong," Zack said stopping Cody when he was about to say something. Still, he really wanted those pictures, so maybe Zack had a good idea for once. They say a broken watch is still right two times a day.

"Hey Maddie," Zack said walking up to her trying to sound as cool as he could, though Cody knew that Maddie could see right through that tone of voice. "Can you-"

"No."

"But I didn't even ask!" he yelled.

"Let me guess, you need me to do something that would take me away from my job when we're really busy, and Moseby is even more...well Moseby than normal."

"Well, if you won't do it for me-"

"Which I won't"

"Will you do it for Cody?" Zack asked, which wasn't a bad plan. Sure, Maddie may had learned not to just go along with Zack's ideas, but maybe he'd have a chance if his plan wasn't just for himself.

"Let me guess, you did something to him, and now you're trying to fix things, so I'd just cleaning up your problem."

"I'm not cleaning that up either!" Murial said from across the room, sitting down with her feet up.

"No one asked you!" Zack said back with a loud voice.

"I'm just saying," Murial said getting up, "I'm going to head to the rooms now."

"You're actually going to work?" Cody asked.

"No; I'm going to sleep for a bit. It's too loud down here."

"So you're sure that you can't help?" Zack asked.

"Sorry Zack, you're on your own with this one."

Zack walked away a bit sad, but as he walked over to call the wall, ready to head back up to their room, Cody noticed that he was smiling.

"You have another idea, don't you?" Cody asked, knowing his brother too well.

"It's not my first choice, but there's someone else who I'm pretty sure I can get to help us." When their ride came, Cody couldn't help but notice that Zack pressed the number for the top floor.

"Her?" Cody asked, a bit worried.

"Cody, there are some people in the world who seem to be so perfect yet so what's the word?"

"Do you really think she'll help us though?"

"Oh but of course, I've known that this time would come some day, so I wanted to make sure I was ready."

"I'm almost willing to say just give me the money and I'll get over it."

As the two of them went to the top of the hotel Zack let out a sigh. "You know Cody, I'd love to do that, but there's something about finishing what you start that calls to me. So, just this one time, I want to make it right with you."

"For some reason I still don't trust you."

"You probably should not Cody. By the way, what is your blood letter thing again?"

Cody made a note to make sure he didn't take anything that would make him sleep too deep again. Waking up missing a good part of his blood made taking finals a lot harder than it should have been. But before Cody could answer, they arrived at the top floor.

Zack took off down the hall, and Cody ran after him again, really getting tired of running everywhere, but he wasn't going to just let Zack get away from him and start doing whatever his plan was. Zack knocked on the door at the end of the hall, and after a couple minutes, London answered it. "London, so good to see you!" Zack said, causing Cody to roll his eyes.

"I'm not letting you have any more money Zack. You still have not paid me back from the last time."

"I thought you would have forgotten by now," Zack said to himself.

"There are two things that I never forget. Clothes that somehow get caught on fire and..." London paused, trying to think of what the second one was.

"Anyway, that's not why I'm here," Zack said.

"Then what do you want?"

"Well, I heard that you just got a new car, so I thought it might be kind of fun if you'd let me and Cody ride in it for a little while so we can see how great it is."

"And why would I do that? I happen to be a very busy person."

"Well, we saw Porsha out in her new car, and she said that there was no way London could pay for something as nice.

"Daddy did always say that the best way to prove someone wrong was to do it with lots of money."

"So you'll do it?" Zack asked.

"Just remember, this isn't me being nice; this is me showing off."

Cody shook his head, not believing this actually was working. But they followed London to where she kept her car in the hidden part of the hotel, though he noticed Zack trying to look over London's shoulder as she entered the number to get through the last set of doors. "Just follow my directions for a bit, there's someone I need to meet."

London pulled out onto the road, and Zack pulled up the tracking thing on the computer. "Now let's find your two-wheeled thing that makes you go fast."

Cody shook his head, really wondering when he would get over his fear of that word. Just because the one movie they saw had the bad guy going after the two main people with one of those, Zack hated that word. That and he's still trying to hide when Cody would say that other word, something that Cody liked to do from time to time, especially when Zack was trying to ask a new girl out.

"Okay, right here; now left, now straight for 1 point three blocks," Zack said as they went through the blocks. They hit a red light and stopped for a few seconds.

"Are you sure you know where we need to go?" London asked.

"No, he's just making it up as we go."

"Actually, we need to go back where we came, I read this thing wrong," Zack added, telling Cody he was right.

London looked behind her, and saw it would be hard to make a U-turn since she was on a one-way street, but there wasn't any cars behind her, so she grabbed the PRNDL and then started going back.

"I don't think this is allowed," Cody said.

"That's what the IRS tells Daddy all the time, but that's never caused him to stop."

"Now just get on the high-way up ahead, and follow it for about 10 stops," Zack said pointing ahead and London listened.

"How far away is she?" Cody asked, looking over Zack's shoulder.

"Looks like about 20 minutes from here," Zack said. "She's made really good time where ever it is she's going."

"This a girl you asked out?" London asked.

"No, although she was kind of good looking," Zack said, thinking London might have been onto a good idea. Then again, she did seem to be a bit crazy, the whole needing to get away from those guys in suits probably not the best sign, but sometimes it was best just throw things like that to the side and jump into it. After all, what was the worst thing that could happen?

"Well, you've already been in behind bars once," Cody said, causing Zack to roll his eyes as he pointed London down the road, the car starting to go faster.

It took them about half an hour before they finally seemed to get close to the tracking thing, which made Zack and Cody wonder just how fast that girl could go. But still, they made it, and at least this trip with London didn't end with two meetings with police, so that was a good sign. "Take the road here," Zack said, and Cody noticed that they seemed to have crossed the state line.

As the car started to slow down, the three of them noticed something that seemed out of place in the field. "Why is there a plane there?" London asked.

"London, that isn't a plane,"

"Right, they don't have a spinning thing on top," Zack added. "But it looks like she's over there, so head to it."

With that, London drove the car over to the plane like thing, and they saw two people getting into it, one of whom Zack remembered seeing from before.

So almost after London stopped the car, Zack got out of it and ran over to them. "Hey!" he said, waving his arms.

"Oh, I remember you," the girl said. "Thanks for letting me use that. It worked really good to add Pete's special make stuff go really fast things."

"I'm still working on a name for those. Just know that there's a chance before you ride it again, it may end up blowing up on you. Also, most loving sister, stop calling me Pete! My name's Peter."

"Yeah yeah. So, I guess you want that back," she said turning to Zack.

"Yeah, there was something on it that my brother really cared about, so I had to get it back for him," Zack said.

"You're a good brother," Peter said.

"That or the brother was going to cause bad things to happen to him," she added.

"Drew, not all people are like you."

"Good thing too," she said with a laugh before the two of them started to make their way up into the plane like thing. "So how'd you find me anyway," she said, starting to climb the steps.

"There was a thing in there that let us track you," Zack said.

"I like it," Drew said with a smile that caused Cody to worry. "Keep those twenty hundred," she said pulling out a piece of paper and writing some numbers on it before walking to Zack and handing the paper to him. "Give me a call some time if you want. I'm sure we'd have lots of fun." She then turned and walked back up the steps, leaving Zack a bit confused, but he got her number, and got to keep the money, so he was happy.

"Forget about that number if you know what's good for you," Peter said, right before the two of them took off, leaving Zack and Cody with what they came here for.

"Man, I should have taken one of those instead of the car," London said pointing to the flying machine as it took off.

"You can fly them?"

"Of course, I took it to school one say, but then they yelled at me, saying that a roof wasn't a place I could put it. Well, where else would I, none of the other spaces were empty."

Zack and Cody shook their heads, but headed back to the car, with Zack fighting the thing with two wheels to get them to fit in the back of London's car. Then the three of them went back to the Tipton.

"Hey Zack," Cody said after about 10 minutes of the trip had passed.

"What?" Zack asked.

"You said she gave you ten-hundred for that, but she mentioned twenty hundred. You were trying to pocket the rest."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Zack said, though Cody gave him the look which Zack was pretty sure had been learned from Moseby.

"Okay, you got me. But still, we would not have the money if not for me so how about I keep half of the real number."

"I'm okay with that," Cody said, but the way Cody was looking out of the car as they went down the road told Zack that there was something else his brother was planning. But either way, Zack had a number of a good looking girl, a lot of money, and everything seemed to point to the start of a great two days off school.

 **A/N:** Okay, first of all, an explanation. This is a story I wrote as practice to get ready for National Novel Writing Month, but I wanted to get this edited some before posting it. You may have also noticed that some of my word choices were a bit weird, and that's because I wrote this with the restriction that I only use the 1000 most common words. Hence the reason I needed to include Zack's phobia of the word bike.

Also, Drew and Peter were characters from my original story More To See, which is over on Wattpad (my username over there is tiger002) so if you want a modern day fantasy story where I had the goal of having as much fun as possible while writing it, and did not have the goal of everything being spelled write.

I ended up receiving a review a couple days ago from an anonymous reviewer on my story "This Christmas Candle". I wish you had signed in so I could reply in a less convoluted way, but I saw your review, and that got me thinking. I had been wanting to do a short Christmas story for More To See, but getting your review made me think that another story in my Suite Life series may also be fitting. I'll see what I can do this weekend. It may be past Christmas (unless you read this really soon after I post) but it's before New Year's so that has to count for something. Plus, the Christmas season seems to be several weeks/months before Christmas, so why can't it extend a few days after Christmas for it to count?

And lastly, considering my whole retirement from writing Suite Life fan fiction, that making my last story in the fandom a little one-shot would seem a bit off. And I agree. I'm not done with this fandom, I promise you this much.

And now, if you're asking the question that I think you're asking (and if you're from a certain country known for its chocolate and alcohol, then I'm sure you're asking the question that I think you're asking) then the answer is yes.


End file.
